Notes from the workbench
What I’m learning as I build, test, and occasionally break things.
8 notes
Field Notes capture one observation. Technical Teardowns examine implementation choices and tradeoffs. Essays develop a product argument from the work.
- The hard part of AI floorplan parsing isn’t the model
A source-grounded look at a floorplan pipeline: where structured output helps, how file-based resume can fail, and which validation mechanisms still belong in the next version.
Technical Teardown · 6 min read
Applied AI · Spatial systems · Pipeline reliability - The boundary between generative and deterministic systems
Designesto, Blocks and the PropVR AI foundation show three different places to draw the boundary between open-ended generation and decisions a product must preserve.
Essay · 7 min read
Product architecture · Applied AI · Design technology - AI video got good. Directing a sequence is still hard.
A thirty-second experiment, two saved local H3 control graphs, and a proposed six-beat sequence show why shot quality and editorial continuity are different problems.
Technical Teardown · 6 min read
AI video · Creative direction · Local generation - Making tools easier to steer
In design software and AI tools, I keep coming back to a practical question. Can someone change the result without having to start over?
Field Note · 2 min read
Human agency · Product design · Immersive systems - What I’m revisiting in my 2023 essay on AI and games
I wrote about AI in game development in 2023. Building with these tools has since made me more interested in revision, consistency, and what happens inside the editor.
Field Note · 2 min read
Applied AI · Game development · Production systems - Why I still build things myself
I’ve moved from game programming to leading product and technology teams. Making things myself still helps me understand what to ask of a product and the people building it.
Field Note · 2 min read
Career reflections · Product engineering · Emerging technology - From a documentary to a browser flight experiment
After watching Operation Safed Sagar, I spent a few days building a fictional reconnaissance flight that runs in the browser.
Field Note · 1 min read
Browser games · AI-assisted engineering · Real-time 3D - Web Ocean 3D: what broke when other people ran it
Sharing my browser ocean exposed a texture budget I was not measuring. The repair cut asset allocation, increased download weight, and revealed a broken visual baseline.
Technical Teardown · 6 min read
Reliability · Web graphics · Performance